author
Willem Bilderdijk
1756–1831
A major Dutch poet and man of letters, he lived through revolution, exile, and political upheaval, and poured those pressures into an enormous body of writing. His fierce convictions and restless energy made him one of the most influential literary figures in the Netherlands around the turn of the nineteenth century.
3 Audiobooks
De ondergang der Eerste Wareld
by Willem Bilderdijk
Kort verhaal van eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis en nieuwe planeetontdekking
by Willem Bilderdijk
Mijn verlustiging
by Willem Bilderdijk
About the author
Born in Amsterdam in 1756, Willem Bilderdijk became known as a poet, historian, lawyer, and linguist. As a child he was laid up for years by a foot injury, and that long period of reading helped shape his unusually wide learning. He later studied law at Leiden and built a reputation not only for poetry but for scholarship across many fields.
His life was deeply affected by politics. A committed supporter of the House of Orange, he refused to align himself with the new revolutionary order in 1795 and went into exile. He returned to the Netherlands during the reign of Louis Bonaparte, for whom he worked, but his fortunes remained uneven, and much of his later life was marked by financial difficulty.
Bilderdijk was an important early voice in Dutch Romantic literature and had strong influence on younger writers and thinkers. His work ranges across poetry, history, language, and religion, and his forceful personality became almost as famous as his books. He died in Haarlem in 1831, leaving behind a vast and varied body of writing.